Official Washington was in a stir recently pondering the unthinkable: A ranking Republican had confessed on national TV that he had (gasp!) a longtime friendship with a Democrat.

The story involved three Tennesseans: Sen. Bob Corker, who will depart his office at year’s end; Brentwood U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who wants the job next; and the Nashville Democrat who is opposing her, Phil Bredesen.

It was a silly story but seemed to shock the gossipy Capitol to its basement. For most members of Congress, and the news media who cluster around them, party labels are how they understand the world anymore.

Forget the threat of nuclear war, chaos in Syria and U.S. abandonment of environmental protection — the Washington press corps had gotten wind that the GOP leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, privately fussed at Corker.

Seems he felt Corker was not being sufficiently shrill by denouncing Bredesen, nor full-throated enough in cheering on Republican Blackburn.

Corker, defending himself, said he had sent Blackburn’s campaign a big contribution — the acid test of fealty — and that he would dutifully vote for her come November.

But he told the Washington Post and CNN that, no, he also had zero intention of attacking Bredesen, hammer and tong, like a good Party Man might.

All this is a big tempest in a domed teapot, of course, though McConnell is correct that the GOP could lose the Senate next year if Blackburn loses in Tennessee. It’s why our Senate race in November will be the most watched in America.

The history of the Corker-Bredesen friendship

But Corker’s friendship with Bredesen goes back 20 years. It all began when Nashville was trying to nail down a deal with the state of Tennessee to build what became Nissan Stadium, home of the Titans.

Bredesen was mayor. Corker was the state’s commissioner of finance. While a negotiating team worked out the voluminous development agreement, Corker was Gov. Don Sundquist’s designated liaison with Bredesen.

The two discovered they not only got along well (as Sundquist and Bredesen famously did not), but a mutual respect also grew connected to their respective backgrounds in business.

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By this time state highway improvements were necessary to develop Chattanooga’s riverfront and also Enterprise South, the industrial park where Volkswagen and Amazon.com eventually located.

Neither Bredesen nor Corker should be expected to dismiss the other’s party loyalty. We shall see how the Democrat Bredesen fares head to head against the Republican Blackburn in what is now a deeply red state.

Blackburn has earned the unalloyed support of President Donald Trump.

Keel Hunt(Photo11: Submitted)

On the other hand, if a Democrat can win the Corker seat this year, it would be Bredesen, a centrist in the tradition of most of Tennessee’s statewide officials over my lifetime.

Like them, he was a pragmatic problem-solver as mayor and governor.

More and more, I think of the late Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., and the lesson of his life. He became a paragon of civility in his career in Washington, even as Congress wrangled with great passion over issues of deep import. Baker gave respect to — and received it back from — his colleagues of both parties.

“If we cannot be civil to one another,” Baker said in 1998, about the time Corker met Bredesen, “if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree or that we don’t like, we would soon stop functioning altogether.”

There must be room for friendship — most of all in today’s fractured Washington — and of the kind that crosses the aisle, like statesmen used to do.